Full Blast & Friends

Sketches and Ballads
Trost TR 107

Peter Brötzmann & Jörg Fischer

Live in Wiesbaden

NotTwo MW 877-2

Now that he’s into his eighth decade, German reedist Peter Brötzmann, who plays alto and tenor saxophone, clarinet and tárogató here, is becoming like Ol’ Man River – he just keeps rolling along. This accomplishment would seem less noteworthy if the Wuppertal-based player wasn’t on the road in a variety of formations as often and for as lengthy a time as musicians one-third his age; if he didn’t still play with the same nephritic intonation as he did on his first recording session in 1965; and if his soloing wasn’t still rife with the same intelligent intensity he has demonstrated often during his long career.

Two different – if familiar – settings enliven these discs. Live in Wiesbaden captures the initial recorded duo between the veteran reedist and local drummer Jörg Fischer. Fischer, who often plays with the likes of pianist Uwe Oberg, joins the long line of percussionists from Han Bennink to Hamid Drake who have matched wits with Brötzmann. Recorded about 15 months later during Donaueschingher’s Music Days, Sketches and Ballads is a single track blow-out, centred on the composition of another drummer, Swiss Michael Wertmüller, who with Zürich electric bassist Marino Pliakas, makes up one of Brötzmann’s working trios. Bringing to mind other staccato exercises in mass blowing such as John Coltrane’s Ascension and Brötzmann’s Machine Gun, this CD includes added sonic ballast when three other players join the basic trio. They are Chicago’s Ken Vandermark on baritone saxophone and clarinet, who also plays with Brötzmann in the all-horn Sonore trio and Chicago Tenet; German-born New York-based trumpeter Thomas Heberer, best-known for his years in Holland’s ICP Orchestra; and German percussionist Dirk Rothbrust, whose membership in the Schlagquartett Köln confirms his mastery of notated as well as improvised music.

Built up from kinetic drum rolls and thick electric bass rumbles in ever-thickening waves, Sketches and Ballads’s exposition soon open up for a series of solos including Vandermark stuttering and slithering narrowed tones from the clarinet and flutter-tongued trumpeting and renal extensions from Brötzmann’s low-pitched tenor saxophone. The polyrhythmic wall of sound is almost opaque, since Rothbrust’s kettle drums reverberate powerfully alongside the composer’s measured regular kit thumps. Staccato counterpoint exists between Vandermark’s baritone snorts and Heberer’s heraldic triplet runs, but it’s Brötzmann’s nearly out-of-control tárogató interludes that fully define the performance. The penultimate sequence eventually moderates as scrupulously positioned bass drum echoes back up a moderate reading of a funereally paced tenor saxophone sequence. Initially suggesting “Round Midnight”, Brötzmann’s final solo speeds up to altissimo yowls, which are matched in frenzy by Heberer’s trumpet spits. Shaped by muscular pops and ruffs from the dual percussionists, the stop-time finale shudders to a halt.

Tossing timbres every which way during the preceding four tracks on Live in Wiesbaden, Brötzmann and Fischer attain an epiphany of sorts by the middle section of “Cute Cuts”, which finds the grizzled stylist exposing his variant of tough-tenor lyricism. Initially his shrill reflux, ululating puffs and triple-tongued popping and stopping answer the question of what result from a merger of bugle calls from a Prussian cavalry band and Albert Ayler’s tenor saxophone glossolalia. Nonetheless, Brötzmann reverts to whistling shrillness and shrieks while Fischer clatters his cymbals with rhythmic intensity by the tune’s climax.

Throughout the initial exposition, the parallel improvising is defined by paradiddle pops, clattering ruffs and cymbal ringing on one side and lung-scraping nephritic cries and continuously breathed low-pitched snorts from the other. Respite comes when the primeval wood texture exposed by the drummer’s nerve beats and stick-work clanks pull back as stentorian vibrations from the tárogató speak of timber a well as timbre.

Meanwhile the pre-“Cute Cuts” climax is reached during the nearly 20-minute “Buddy Wrapping”, a title open to all sorts of interpretations. Sonically, Brötzmann’s tongue pressure is such that his reed bites and glottal slaps divide as they’re emphasized, revealing multi tones for each vibration he blows. Meanwhile the drummer’s reverberations are as polyrhythmic as the reedist’s are polyphonic: nakedly proffering kinetic slaps, constant pounding and thick friction. The tension reaches such concrete textures that it seems that the two will soon tumble into Bedlam-related mouth-frothing, before horn buzzes and splutters lead the piece to a responsive finale.

At 70, Brötzmann has lost none of the old piss and vinegar in his performances. And these session match him with a coteries of youngsters who can keep up with him, mano-à-mano or in a group.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sketches: 1. Sketches and Ballads

Personnel: Sketches: Thomas Heberer (trumpet); Peter Brötzmann (tenor saxophone and tárogató); Ken Vandermark (baritone saxophone and, clarinet); Marino Pliakas (electric bass); Michael Wertmüller (drums) and Dirk Rothbrust (percussion and timpani)

Track Listing: Live: 1. Productive Cough 2. The Steady Hand as Planned 3. Buddy Wrapping 4. Song for Fred 5. Cute Cuts

Personnel: Live: Peter Brötzmann (alto and tenor saxophones, clarinet and tárogató) and Jörg Fischer (drums)

May 31, 2012

Derek Bailey/Steve Noble

Out of the Past
Ping Pong 004

Michael Wertmüller/Olaf Rupp

The Specter of Genius

Jazzwerkstatt JW 052

Except in the most primitive form of blues or so-called roots music, the unadorned sounds of guitar and drum together aren’t usually considered polyphonic enough to be anything more than Spartan. Yet, as he did with so many other musical conventions during his life, British guitarist Derek Bailey (1930-2005) defied this one as well.

The 12 tracks from this never-before issued 1999 session with inventive London drummer Steve Noble are jam-packed with sonic textures and impressions radiating only from the multi-faceted operation of Bailey electric guitar and Noble’s drum kit and additional cymbals. Instructively as well, with sessions like this extant, the configuration has lost its strangeness. On The Specter of Genius, for instance, – with no indication of who is the genius – two Berlin-based players whose influences encompass Punk Rock and Heavy Metal as well as Free Improv and contemporary notated music offer their variations on this theme. Recorded about a decade after the Noble-Bailey meeting, the improvisations by self-taught guitarist Olaf Rupp and drummer Michael Wertmüller, who studied music intensively in Berne and Amsterdam, differ from the other CD due to the drummer’s larger kit and Rupp’s use of both acoustic and electric guitars.

When Out of the Past was recorded, Noble had been associated with Bailey for at least a decade and knew how best to play alongside him. Moreover his other affiliations –including membership in Rip, Rag and Panic, study with a Nigerian master drummer, and experience in bands with other self-directed players such as reedist Lol Coxhill and cellist Tristan Honsinger – gave him other resources to call on when faced with Bailey’s inimitable but often overbearing style.

On “Motion” for instance the guitarist’s distanced, clanging flat picking eventually leads to slurred and splayed note chiming. In response Noble’s flams and rebounds swell to encompass extra beats from his snares, wobbly, glass tube-referencing pings and showers of cymbal pressure. “Breakaway” on the other hand showcases cymbals clattering and triangle chiming as Bailey’s guitar quivers with trebly reverb and squealed notes. As the guitarist’s slammed and scrubbed licks dissolve into wobbly finger-picking, Noble turns from popping and banging parts of his kit with sticks to rubbing drum tops with his palms. Afterwards a wavering timbre hangs in the air, un-attributed to either instrument.

Bailey’s other strategies encompass tropes as different as stroking harsh arpeggios from the strings below the guitar’s bridge and creating dense strums so quick and staccato that they take on band-saw-like properties. Therefore Noble’s sharp-witted ripostes or sonic foreshadowing include Native-American tom-tom resonations, cross-sticking jazz-like snare and cymbal beats, and slapping unattached cymbals in such a way that the resulting wobbles resemble those of a cuckoo clock.

Interestingly enough, “7 Shades”, the final track, not only sums up the duet work, but further elucidates the Noble-Bailey tactics. First distanced, near-silent reverberating scratches from Bailey finally coalesce into chiming runs and then distorted slurs. Noble paradiddles, backbeats and sounds loud press rolls in military fashion. These are met by hammered slack tones from Bailey’s guitar that grimly distance each stroke from the next. Pulling rhythms together for the finale, Noble highlights engaged and contrapuntal doubled pops and press rolls.

If harsh strumming was one of Bailey’s many improvisational tactics, then Rupp glories in the astringent friction he can wring from both of his guitars using rasgueados, arpeggios, tremolos and picados. Rupp, who often plays his guitar in an upright position for a firmer attack, glories in the cluster of granular effects he can produce. Someone who has played with Coxhill and synthesizer player Thomas Lehn among others, he’s matched in linear power and broken-octave harshness by Wertmüller, who composes computer-assisted scores as well as drums for such outfits as the organ-heavy Steamboat Switzerland and a trio with saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who practically defines balls-to-the-wall improvising.

With tension-filled tones predominating, the duo work here is denser, more frenetic and voluble than that of Bailey and Noble. Not only that, but Rupp probably outputs more notes on this CD’s first track than Bailey sounds in all of Out of the Past. Amazingly as well, on many tunes the fortissimo and rasgueado extensions that define the guitarist’s output are pummeled from acoustic guitar strings.

To match the guitarist’s constant rubbing and slurred fingering, Wertmüller adds shimmering cymbal movements, boisterous press rolls and a percussion formula which constantly erupts into flams, drags and ruffs. On “A_5” for instance, as concentrated strums from Rupp expose his strings underlying textures and tessitura, the guitarist’s playing becomes so unrestrained that his licks snap past the pick guard to hit other parts of the guitar’s strings and body. To keep up, the drummer whacks, strokes and never slackens his chromatic percussive motion. Wertmüller’s opposite sticking and strokes erupt into near-Heavy Metal pulsations on “A_7”, appending a thunderstorm of cymbal strokes alternating with off beat bops and rolls. Rupp’s rapid downward running picados move beyond flamenco here, attaining a crescendo and then ceasing.

Distortion and reverb are some of the few additions to this muscular interface when Rupp uses his electric guitar. His echoing surfaces on “E_2” are so fortissimo and speedy, for example, that the textures that the drummer slams from his kit are regularized to such an extent that they could be coming form a drum machine.

Droning techo-flutters and Jimi Hendrix-like flanges abound on “E_4”, the most characteristic electric-guitar duet. Here the nearly opaque distortion and manically tremolo twanging are breached by the drummer smacking the metallic parts of his snares and toms while adding paradiddles, backbeats and rolls.

Dense and sturdy to an extreme, the sounds produced by the younger Germans wouldn’t be possible without the stripped down improvisational freedom propagated by earlier players such as the British ones here.

-- Kane Waxman

Track Listing: Out: 1. The Long Wait 2. Four for 4 3. Breakaway 4. Raw 5. Unfiltered 6. Motion 7. Out of Sight 8. Bright Moments 9. Pick Up (10. Decoy 11. Time Regained 12. 7 shades

Personnel: Out: Derek Bailey (guitar) and Steve Noble (drums and cymbals)

Track Listing: Specter: 1. A_1 2. E_1 3. A_2 4. E_2 5. E_3 6. A_3 7. A_4 8. E_4 9. A_5 10. A_6 11. E_5 12. A_7 13. E_6 14. A_8 15. A_9 16. A_1 0

Personnel: Specter: Olaf Rupp (electric [E] or acoustic [A] guitar) and Michael Wertmüller (drums)

January 21, 2010

Michael Wertmüller/Olaf Rupp

The Specter of Genius
Jazzwerkstatt JW 052

Derek Bailey/Steve Noble

Out of the Past

Ping Pong 004

Except in the most primitive form of blues or so-called roots music, the unadorned sounds of guitar and drum together aren’t usually considered polyphonic enough to be anything more than Spartan. Yet, as he did with so many other musical conventions during his life, British guitarist Derek Bailey (1930-2005) defied this one as well.

The 12 tracks from this never-before issued 1999 session with inventive London drummer Steve Noble are jam-packed with sonic textures and impressions radiating only from the multi-faceted operation of Bailey electric guitar and Noble’s drum kit and additional cymbals. Instructively as well, with sessions like this extant, the configuration has lost its strangeness. On The Specter of Genius, for instance, – with no indication of who is the genius – two Berlin-based players whose influences encompass Punk Rock and Heavy Metal as well as Free Improv and contemporary notated music offer their variations on this theme. Recorded about a decade after the Noble-Bailey meeting, the improvisations by self-taught guitarist Olaf Rupp and drummer Michael Wertmüller, who studied music intensively in Berne and Amsterdam, differ from the other CD due to the drummer’s larger kit and Rupp’s use of both acoustic and electric guitars.

When Out of the Past was recorded, Noble had been associated with Bailey for at least a decade and knew how best to play alongside him. Moreover his other affiliations –including membership in Rip, Rag and Panic, study with a Nigerian master drummer, and experience in bands with other self-directed players such as reedist Lol Coxhill and cellist Tristan Honsinger – gave him other resources to call on when faced with Bailey’s inimitable but often overbearing style.

On “Motion” for instance the guitarist’s distanced, clanging flat picking eventually leads to slurred and splayed note chiming. In response Noble’s flams and rebounds swell to encompass extra beats from his snares, wobbly, glass tube-referencing pings and showers of cymbal pressure. “Breakaway” on the other hand showcases cymbals clattering and triangle chiming as Bailey’s guitar quivers with trebly reverb and squealed notes. As the guitarist’s slammed and scrubbed licks dissolve into wobbly finger-picking, Noble turns from popping and banging parts of his kit with sticks to rubbing drum tops with his palms. Afterwards a wavering timbre hangs in the air, un-attributed to either instrument.

Bailey’s other strategies encompass tropes as different as stroking harsh arpeggios from the strings below the guitar’s bridge and creating dense strums so quick and staccato that they take on band-saw-like properties. Therefore Noble’s sharp-witted ripostes or sonic foreshadowing include Native-American tom-tom resonations, cross-sticking jazz-like snare and cymbal beats, and slapping unattached cymbals in such a way that the resulting wobbles resemble those of a cuckoo clock.

Interestingly enough, “7 Shades”, the final track, not only sums up the duet work, but further elucidates the Noble-Bailey tactics. First distanced, near-silent reverberating scratches from Bailey finally coalesce into chiming runs and then distorted slurs. Noble paradiddles, backbeats and sounds loud press rolls in military fashion. These are met by hammered slack tones from Bailey’s guitar that grimly distance each stroke from the next. Pulling rhythms together for the finale, Noble highlights engaged and contrapuntal doubled pops and press rolls.

If harsh strumming was one of Bailey’s many improvisational tactics, then Rupp glories in the astringent friction he can wring from both of his guitars using rasgueados, arpeggios, tremolos and picados. Rupp, who often plays his guitar in an upright position for a firmer attack, glories in the cluster of granular effects he can produce. Someone who has played with Coxhill and synthesizer player Thomas Lehn among others, he’s matched in linear power and broken-octave harshness by Wertmüller, who composes computer-assisted scores as well as drums for such outfits as the organ-heavy Steamboat Switzerland and a trio with saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who practically defines balls-to-the-wall improvising.

With tension-filled tones predominating, the duo work here is denser, more frenetic and voluble than that of Bailey and Noble. Not only that, but Rupp probably outputs more notes on this CD’s first track than Bailey sounds in all of Out of the Past. Amazingly as well, on many tunes the fortissimo and rasgueado extensions that define the guitarist’s output are pummeled from acoustic guitar strings.

To match the guitarist’s constant rubbing and slurred fingering, Wertmüller adds shimmering cymbal movements, boisterous press rolls and a percussion formula which constantly erupts into flams, drags and ruffs. On “A_5” for instance, as concentrated strums from Rupp expose his strings underlying textures and tessitura, the guitarist’s playing becomes so unrestrained that his licks snap past the pick guard to hit other parts of the guitar’s strings and body. To keep up, the drummer whacks, strokes and never slackens his chromatic percussive motion. Wertmüller’s opposite sticking and strokes erupt into near-Heavy Metal pulsations on “A_7”, appending a thunderstorm of cymbal strokes alternating with off beat bops and rolls. Rupp’s rapid downward running picados move beyond flamenco here, attaining a crescendo and then ceasing.

Distortion and reverb are some of the few additions to this muscular interface when Rupp uses his electric guitar. His echoing surfaces on “E_2” are so fortissimo and speedy, for example, that the textures that the drummer slams from his kit are regularized to such an extent that they could be coming form a drum machine.

Droning techo-flutters and Jimi Hendrix-like flanges abound on “E_4”, the most characteristic electric-guitar duet. Here the nearly opaque distortion and manically tremolo twanging are breached by the drummer smacking the metallic parts of his snares and toms while adding paradiddles, backbeats and rolls.

Dense and sturdy to an extreme, the sounds produced by the younger Germans wouldn’t be possible without the stripped down improvisational freedom propagated by earlier players such as the British ones here.

-- Kane Waxman

Track Listing: Out: 1. The Long Wait 2. Four for 4 3. Breakaway 4. Raw 5. Unfiltered 6. Motion 7. Out of Sight 8. Bright Moments 9. Pick Up (10. Decoy 11. Time Regained 12. 7 shades

Personnel: Out: Derek Bailey (guitar) and Steve Noble (drums and cymbals)

Track Listing: Specter: 1. A_1 2. E_1 3. A_2 4. E_2 5. E_3 6. A_3 7. A_4 8. E_4 9. A_5 10. A_6 11. E_5 12. A_7 13. E_6 14. A_8 15. A_9 16. A_1 0

Personnel: Specter: Olaf Rupp (electric [E] or acoustic [A] guitar) and Michael Wertmüller (drums)

January 21, 2010